Build Python in Visual Studio with Python Tools for Visual Studio

Develop with Visual Studio but regularly work with Python projects? There’s now support available for you right inside Visual Studio thanks to a new beta of the Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS).

The Python tools are put together by a small team from Microsoft’s Technical Computing Group and released on Codeplex.

The beta release that has just been announced added support for running Python on Windows Azure, as well as the “Big Data” support (an implementation of map/reduce storage and search technology). This is on top of the previous core integration with Visual Studio, which included debugging and profiling of Python apps, support for CPython, IPython, IronPython (which runs on the .NET Dynamic Language Runtime). It also includes support for NumPy and SciPy, two scientific Python libraries that are widely used when performing mathematical analysis.

Fascinatingly there is also support for running IronPython in browsers through Silverlight. The Python script is loaded through a script tag wth the type set to “text/python”, and some JavaScript code then enables this through Silverlight to interact with the DOM.

In terms of IDE support, there is everything you would expect from a recent Visual Studio plugin. Intellisense is enabled, you get help with signatures and quick info on members. This is also greatly extended for Python built-in members.

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